And in those days—­we cannot, of course, exactly say when—­there came—­first I suppose into the south and east of France, and then gradually onward into England and Scotland and Ireland—­creatures without any hair to keep them warm, or scales to defend them, without horns or tusks to fight with, or teeth to worry and bite; the weakest you would have thought of the beasts, and yet stronger than all the animals, because they were Men, with reasonable souls.  Whence they came we cannot tell, nor why; perhaps from mere hunting after food, and love of wandering and being independent and alone.  Perhaps they came into that icy land for fear of stronger and cleverer people than themselves; for we have no proof, my child, none at all, that they were the first men that trod this earth.  But be that as it may, they came; and so cunning were these savage men, and so brave likewise, though they had no iron among them, only flint and sharpened bones, yet they contrived to kill and eat the mammoths, and the giant oxen, and the wild horses, and the reindeer, and to hold their own against the hyaenas, and tigers, and bears, simply because they had wits, and the dumb animals had none.  And that is the strangest part to me of all my fairy tale.  For what a man’s wits are, and why he has them, and therefore is able to invent and to improve, while even the cleverest ape has none, and therefore can invent and improve nothing, and therefore cannot better himself, but must remain from father to son, and father to son again, a stupid, pitiful, ridiculous ape, while men can go on civilising themselves, and growing richer and more comfortable, wiser and happier, year by year—­how that comes to pass, I say, is to me a wonder and a prodigy and a miracle, stranger than all the most fantastic marvels you ever read in fairy tales.

You may find the flint weapons which these old savages used buried in many a gravel-pit up and down France and the south of England; but you will find none here, for the gravel here was made (I am told) at the beginning of the ice-time, before the north of England sunk into the sea, and therefore long, long before men came into this land.  But most of their remains are found in caves which water has eaten out of the limestone rocks, like that famous cave of Kent’s Hole at Torquay.  In it, and in many another cave, lie the bones of animals which the savages ate, and cracked to get the marrow out of them, mixed up with their flint-weapons and bone harpoons, and sometimes with burnt ashes and with round stones, used perhaps to heat water, as savages do now, all baked together into a hard paste or breccia by the lime.  These are in the water, and are often covered with a floor of stalagmite which has dripped from the roof above and hardened into stone.  Of these caves and their beautiful wonders I must tell you another day.  We must keep now to our fairy tale.  But in these caves, no doubt, the savages lived; for not only have weapons been found in them, but actually